1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a video processing apparatus and method adapted to analyse aerial survey video. The invention is applicable, for example, but not exclusively, in the field of offshore environmental surveying.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the field of offshore environmental surveying, it is often necessary to carry out surveys of large areas of open sea in a short period of time. The only feasible way to achieve this is to use an aircraft to deploy some means of implementing an environmental survey. In the past, such surveys have often utilised specially trained human observers, who identify and count observed creatures, such as sea birds and marine mammals. More recently these techniques have been replaced by technologies based on digital image capture.
Digital imaging survey technologies have many intrinsic advantages over visual observers: the surveys are repeatable and auditable; the aircraft can fly higher, increasing safety and enabling surveys over man-made constructions such as wind-farms. However, one problem is that much of the captured digital images, such as video data, are views of empty sea not containing any items of interest. This makes analysis of the images to produce an offshore environmental survey very time-consuming and inefficient.